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Locating field science: a geographical family expedition to Glen Roy, Scotland

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 March 2005

HAYDEN LORIMER  and
NICK SPEDDING
HAYDEN LORIMER
Affiliation:
Department of Geography and Geomatics, University of Glasgow, Glasgow G12 8QQ, UK
NICK SPEDDING
Affiliation:
University of Aberdeen, Kings College, Aberdeen, AB24 3FX, UK.
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Abstract

This paper reconstructs the historical geographies of a family holiday and field trip in 1952 to Glen Roy, Scotland, site of the famous Parallel Roads. The puzzle of the Parallel Roads' origin has generated a hefty literature over the years, much of it written by eminent scientists, but is here considered through an episode in the scientific history of Glen Roy that did not make the published record. The primary source is the Murray family's expedition logbook: a private and personal document that records the various aspects of life and work in the field. This is supplemented by the family's oral history. Drawing on concepts from science studies and geography, the paper tries to ‘get behind the science’ itself to explore the underlying motives and actions that make it happen. These are intrinsically geographical, because they shape, and are shaped by, the relationships between people, ideas and places. Two themes are central to the account of these other historical geographies of this trip to Glen Roy. The first of these is the coming together of a distinctly local community of knowledge in the Badenoch Field Club in the early 1950s. The second, revealed by the logbook's emphasis on storytelling, travelling and residing, is the way in which the presence of the family in the field changes the ways in which the site of scientific investigation is experienced and understood.

Type
Research Article
Information
The British Journal for the History of Science , Volume 38 , Issue 1 , March 2005 , pp. 13 - 33
Copyright
© 2005 British Society for the History of Science

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Footnotes

First and foremost we need to thank Catriona Murray for her generous hospitality, her patience, her insight and her preparedness to share memories and ideas. We are grateful to the FO, the Leader and the MA (i.e. Catriona, Neil and Elisabeth), all of whom read the draft MS, and, if at times critical of the strange academic language, did agree that we had conveyed the tone of the expedition appropriately. Simon Naylor offered constant encouragement and put in great work steering this project from idea to conference session to publication. Earlier versions of the paper were improved by comments from audiences in York, London, Glasgow and Hull. Finally, thanks to two anonymous referees for their constructive comments on the draft MS, to Charles Withers, Diarmid Finnegan and Kate Foster for sharing thoughts and information, and to the Highland Folk Museum, Kingussie, for allowing access to the records of the Badenoch Field Club.